The Art and Practice of Loving

Feeling OK About Your Body (or Mind or Talents or …)

11 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment

by frank in Blog

How each one of us understands our life is one particular take on Existence and on the human condition. I illuminate myself, others, and Existence with a tiny colored penlight. Based on what I see with this unique light, I hold the unique reality that I thereby create as an “IS” rather than as an “AS.”

I was taught the perspective that I am not part of a group, us, but I am an individual, separate from & competing with others.

If or when I judge something about myself negatively, could I use my pain to unite myself with countless people with similar pain, rather than hold it as my personal pain? To see myself as “one of us” rather than as “me?”

This moment: Where am I focusing? What is my intention? What game am I playing?
What games other than comparison-judgment-criticism-scanning-for-flaws-body image could I play?

What else could I tell myself? Something perhaps more in line with my highest values?
Something in line with what I want to achieve with my life as I live it?
Something likely to lead to deep satisfaction, joy, enthusiasm, happiness, cooperation, growth?

Will I take charge of how I use my life?

We tend to become like the people with whom we associate, in person or through the media.

Will I honor this incredible body?
Will I set realistic goals for diet and exercise, and then calmly meet them?
What do I offer the world other than the outer appearance of my body?
What behaviors might actually make me more fun, more interesting, more lovable?
How if I were to love and appreciate, rather than focus on being loved or being appreciated?
Will I reach out, help, laugh, smile, enjoy, listen, care, participate, join, share, support, create, appreciate – over and over – whether I feel like it or not?
Will I avoid media and ads that teach body image and celebrity status as the only game in town?

Will I pay attention to my obsessive focus on self-judgment, self-flagellation, and self-hatred?
Am I willing to commit to a mindfulness practice in which I support, rather than abuse, myself?
Procedure: (1) Observe what you tell yourself in your mind. This is what you’re hypnotizing yourself with. (2) Notice, rather than judge, when you beat yourself up in your head. (3) When you notice self-beating, calmly change your focus to something supportive.
Do that over and over and over and ov. . . ., as required.

Are you only how your body looks?
Are you a thing to be judged? Or an experience to be created?

Loving is the experience of a heart-felt “yes.”
Scan for/focus on the positive.
Share a triumph, have a great day.
Break the expected context – say something weird or funny.

What is the purpose of your body? To have stereotypic youthful good looks forever?
How does your body serve you?
Must you agonize over how your body looks? Must you exert control over it?
(Can you control it?)
There is no relationship between how people’s bodies look and quality of their romantic life.
Being in the top fraction of “good looks” is a quick, easy way to get attention.
Do you think that makes for lifelong happiness?
Talk to people who were drop-dead gorgeous when they were young!
They get cheap attention for their bodies, they get objectified,
and they miss the experience of getting it for “themselves.”
They often become obsessed with their bodies.
As they age, they lose this source of what they have relied on to be special.

Your body probably looks like those of your ancestors.
Celebrate your ethnic and genetic heritage.

Sit on a busy street or in a bus station and look at and meditate on lots of real human bodies.

Take ownership of your decisions: Assert and choose for yourself.

If you have been scarred by society, family, employers or peers,
Educate yourself about society, learn how it works and why it works that way.
Dedicate your life to changing society or to helping heal others who are scarred by it.
Thus, you use your own scars to guide you into a rich, meaningful path of growth.

Stay connected with friends, family, groups, counselor, even when you don’t want to.
Put yourself with people who embrace you for who you are,
who honor the direction of your highest growth.
Over and over, switch your attention off of your self and your body:
onto others, ideas, activities, serving, caring.

Choose to practice loving, and trust that the experience of being loved will take care of itself.
Choose to appreciate, rather than to judge.

Choose YES! Over and over. And when you don’t feel like it, choose YES! again.